Life of Bry

“Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.”

Mr. Knightley

Guys, gals and non-binary pals, it is time to take on another classic! This time, I chose Emma by Jane Austen.

Typically, I wait until I finish a book to give my thoughts; however, I annotate my books and I thought it would be fun to walk through them as I read, especially since classics can often be so hard to get through. Plus, I always find it interesting to see how perceptions change from start to end and initial reactions. Hopefully, some of you feel similarly!

I’ll make a post perhaps every 10 chapters or so. I’ll include some photos of my annotations, my thoughts and maybe some predictions.

Before we start …

I need to be honest with yinz before we start this journey. I am not a fan of Jane Austen. I have read both Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, and neither really caught my interest. I find Austen’s writing a bit dull, and I have never been one for romance as a genre. I appreciate Austen for who she is in literary history, but she is not for me. This makes me admittedly biased. I am going into this book knowing that I probably won’t like it. I’m fine with that. I still want to give it a shot.

However, I had Emma recommended to me by several friends, who insisted this was the work that would be make me love Austen. … Or at least love one of her novels as so many others do. I want them to be right. I want to love Emma.

OK, now that is out of the way, here’s how I annotate:

• I keep it simple with sticky tabs, a single pen and a single highlighter.
  • Note: I hate the pen I started annotating this book with, so I changed after 10 chapters. I need to order more of my usual super fine-tip ballpoint pens. *sigh*
• I underline quotes and passages I feel are important.
• I highlight quotes I love or feel are more weighty than others.
• I write all my thoughts in the margins with zero rules for myself. It’s a tangled string of consciousness.

Here are my book tabs for Emma:

• Character stuff: personality traits, development, basic information, etc.
• Gender roles/stipulations/marriage: how characters are affected or coincide with traditional expectations of their respected gender at the time, and the role of marriage.
• Imagination/Creativity/Individuality: stuff that falls outside the humdrums of match-making and social pressures.
• Social class/Society: seems fairly straight forward.
• Quotes to scream & cry about: yep.
• Writing: passages or phrasing that are interesting, beautiful or I want to look more into.

Note: I started with themes I knew would be present, and I’ll add more as I go, if needed.

Now we can begin 🙂

Chapters 1-10

After 10 chapters, I gotta say … I’m actually enjoying this book. It’s a bit of a disaster. A car accident that you cannot look away from. I think the other two Austen novels I’ve read have taken themselves too seriously, which removed me from the story on the basis of frivolousness. Emma is very different in that there’s a sense of comedy around the entire situation, despite it having deep consequences for dear Harriet Smith. Emma is both aware and unaware of her vanity that impedes her judgement that she values so highly.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

First things first, I wanted to defend Emma Woodhouse so much after Chapter 1. I genuinely thought her vanity was an act to uphold the vision of her father. I still feel like that a bit. When everyone puts you on a pedestal, it becomes a challenge to stay there. Her father is so anxious by nature, that I could see her wanting to appease him with her own ease of life. That has bled through to the society that also caters to Emma’s whims, from Miss Taylor (now Mrs. Weston) and now Harriet. She does not wish to disappoint these people that vouch for her superiority, but also she doesn’t want to lose her pride in maintaining that superiority.

However, as the story progresses, it’s clear that Emma’s in way too deep. She genuinely believes herself to be of perfect judgement. She’s a master manipulator — a professional gaslighter — and I’m still unsure if she’s even aware of what she’s doing. Emma has two contradicting sides to her: the one who enjoys helping people and the one who wants to be recognized for helping people.

Emma imposes her perceptions of life onto anyone who dare listen and obey. Harriet is her victim. She is hurting Harriet through friendship by making the lesser class girl think she is also superior. Emma is allowed to stave off marriage and be choosey with suitors, because she was born into wealth. Most women at the time had to marry in order to find financial stability. Harriet, no matter what Emma tells her, is not afforded the same rights. Just because you say she has been welcomed into high society, does not mean she has.

And now Emma has Harriet, who was skeptical at first, believing in a fantasy that will only hurt her when Mr. Elton proposes marriage to Emma and not herself.

Emma, for all her cleverness, is daft. Daft by privilege. She sees what she wants to see and not what is there. But she also makes some valid points on a women’s rights to agree to and reject a suitor and wait for the perfect match. She just misconstrues her good points to fit her agenda. Grrrr … It makes my blood boil. I want to scream at her. I want Mr. Knightley to scream at her.

Speaking of Mr. Knightley, I enjoy him as a bit of a foil to Emma. He recognizes her vanity and poor judgement in a way no one else does. He is not afraid to challenge her. This story needed him to hold a mirror up to Emma’s rampage of near-sighted confidence that is never really contested.

However, I feel it in my bones that he is going to end up being Emma’s love interest, and I hate it. He’s like 16 years older or something. I get that she’s 21, but I just don’t like the parental dynamic of sorts. He feels like a father-figure more so than even Mr. Woodhouse. On the other hand, I don’t know how I feel about our other suitor, Mr. Elton, at the moment. We don’t know much about his personality, except that he’s terrible at delivering hints and has no backbone (ok, so Emma is misinterpreting his hints, but still!). If Emma were to accept a marriage proposal, I’m not sure if it would be from a yes-man that can’t even confess himself upfront.

A final note … this is very random, but I literally had to look up if Gregory Maguire took inspiration from Austen because I saw so many parallels between Wicked and Emma. Emma taking on Harriet as a project (out of the goodness of her heart and insurmountable vanity? Galinda and Elphaba vibes. Mr. Elton being kind to Harriet in an effort to impress Emma? Boq.

Tell me I’m wrong. I’ve connected the dots.

That’s all from me for now! This was more than I expected, so maybe I’ll start doing five-chapter increments instead of 10 from now on. We’ll see what happens.

P.S. I would love to hear your thoughts!